


Hanakotoba

by xlydiadeetz



Series: Requests [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hanahaki Disease, Male-Female Friendship, No one dies in this one, Unrequited Love, request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:06:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xlydiadeetz/pseuds/xlydiadeetz
Summary: In the language of flowers, camellias meant, “I’ll love you forever.”





	Hanakotoba

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andyv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyv/gifts).



> Hello guys! If anyone really checks my profile anymore.  
> I got a request to write a little something about the hanahaki disease (花吐き病 ); fictional disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love.  
> Since I very much love angst, I thought it'd be fun to try and so here is my little take on that!  
> A thousand thank you's to Paola (andyv) for the prompt! I hadn't written something for a long time and it was both fun and refreshing to come up with a short story. 
> 
> I'm currently taking requests for small pieces like this. If anyone's interested, feel free to contact me here or through my twitter/princesgambit.
> 
> Nothing more to say, enjoy!
> 
> **hanakotoba (花言葉) is the Japanese form of the language of flowers.

_I’m waking from this dream._

_When I open my eyes again, you will no longer be there. You’ll disappear before I even notice your absence. I might even forget you._

_But please, don’t think that I hate you. I never once did._

_You see, the thing is dreams can turn into nightmares; nightmares can become real. And so I’ve been surrounded by monsters with beautiful faces and enchanting eyes, and you were part of that. You have always been my biggest dream. My most hidden desire. The most beautiful monster of them all._

_For the longest time, I thought of myself blessed. I would hug myself and spin around and think,_ Oh, how wonderful it is to be able to feel something as strong as this _._

_Falling in love is similar to the blooming of a flower. It’s something exceptional to watch firsthand; it all starts with a seed that with enough nurturing and affection turns into a bulb. And then slowly, with the passing of time, it starts to open. The petals take shape, the aroma penetrates the air, the vibrant colours make of life a sweet fantasy._

_Flowers wither, though. And I expected, against my own wishes, that my flowers would eventually wither too. Instead, they didn’t. No matter how many years have passed, they’ve only grown stronger. They keep blooming and blooming inside of me, making it impossible to ignore._

_And so I’ve decided that it’s time. It’s time to let go of this love of mine. It’s time to say goodbye to you, once and for all._

_I love you._

_But you love someone else. And that’s fine – you have the right to. You have every right to fall in love and be happy. I’ve never wished anything else for you – or really, both of us. Which is why I never dared confess my feelings for you._

_If I said I’ve never expected anything from you, it would be such a lie I think I could earn my ticket to hell just for even thinking of it. For years I thought that maybe if I was patient enough, you’d see me the way I see you. I thought that maybe one day, you’d start to come closer to me instead of drifting in a complete opposite direction._

_But it didn’t happen. And that’s fine._

_Even knowing this, I continued to love you._

_I love the way your eyes are always able to find mine, even in the crowdest room. I love how you never really had the words, but made up for every missing verb in real actions. I love how you can make of everything a celebration. I love your gentleness. I love your kindness. I love how you’re always striving to be the best you can be, and get the best you can get. I love how you refuse to conform yourself with what’s easiest. I love how your mind can race faster than a speeding car and the beating heart of a mouse. I love your shy smiles, and then your loudest laughs. I love your sense of humour, even though sometimes it’s a bit hard to understand. I love how you always stopped to dry my tears. I love how you followed me in every adventure, even when half of the time you didn’t get to know where we were going until we got there. I love how you’ve never judged me. I love how much you love karaoke even though you’re terrible at it._

_And I love that you exist, and that I got to exist there with you._

 

 

***

Her mind was slowly drifting away.

They had told her to count downwards from one hundred, and that’s what she’d done. _One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…._

She could feel her attention unfocusing, slowly. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she couldn’t remember feeling tired, but all of the sudden this heaviness overcame her. For a moment there, she had almost forgotten what it was all about. How she’d end up there.

 _It was a flower_ , she thought. A small, white flower, in the centre of her palm.

She had noticed the smell first, filling up her throat and nostrils. Almost immediately after, she felt the soft petals in her mouth, and she had carefully pulled it out.

Curiousity gave in to fear, and then fear to fascination.

It had to be some sort of magic, right? There had to be some magical explanation. She could pull out flowers from her mouth! But where exactly did they come from? Her tummy, maybe?

She had been so young then, less than ten years old. She knew no harm, no disease. She didn’t even know what love was.

 _Love._ She thought of _him_. But this time, his name didn’t bring her any pain. She couldn’t feel a single thing, apart from the somnolence that crept over her. How odd.

For years, his name had brought her all kind of reactions. Butterflies, blood rapidly rushing to her cheeks, excitement, happiness, tears, dizziness, wanting to dance and sing and scream.

And flowers. Flowers that grew inside of her. After a while, she had realized he was the cause of it. The days they spent together, she would cough up flowers. If they were good days, the flowers were vibrant and soft. Sometimes, they didn’t bring her any pain.

The bad days however, had her retching blood. A fist to her lungs, and she was down on her knees, gasping for air. Bringing her hands to her chest, her throat, her mouth, coughing uncontrollably until her throat was raspy and she could only taste blood in every corner of her mouth. Thorns digging into her flesh as she suffocated.

And then she would gag, catching handfuls of pink petals tinted with scarlet red.

And then she would cry. She would cry so hard she started to believe she could actually drown in her own tears.

Lately, there were only bad days.

Days in which she couldn’t find any sort of strength. She’d look in the mirror, say, _Oh, but can’t you see how unhappy you are?_ and hate herself, and then hate him, and hate the world for what was being done to her.

 _It was a disease,_ they’d told her. _Caused by the sorrow of an unrequited love._

 _But isn’t that a piece by Kreisler?_ she asked herself. _Where was I? Seventy-six? Seventy-five, seventy-four…._

For a minute, there was nothing. Darkness. White noise. The calm drumming of her own heart. She had fallen into a blissful nothing.

“Aria”

 _Who said that?_ she thought.

_Who’s there?_

“Aria, open your eyes.”

She did.

“Eddie,” she said. It was him, or the illusion of him.

Where had she been earlier? She could no longer remember.

Eddie grabbed her hand, smiled, eyes glistening behind his glasses. “I’m glad to have found you.”

“Were you looking for me?”

“Of course,” he smiled again, and there was something about it that pulled a string somewhere in the bottom of her mind. Why was it? What was that she needed to remember? He took a strand of her hair, twirled it around his index finger, as he used to do when they were just kids. “We don’t have much time left, but just enough.”

At her puzzled expression, he chuckled softly. “I promised you we’d go see the sunrise together, remember?”

Was this a memory?

Was this the real form of her desire?

Eddie coming back for her?

Softly, she let go off his hand. “You’re not real, Eddie.”

“What are you saying, Ari? I _am_ real.”

“But you’re not really here, are you?” she asked, her voice sounded sadder than she thought, “You’re merely an illusion.”

Here. And yet too far. The real Edgar was already too far ahead. She knew that.

The real Edgar did no longer play with her hair, or went looking for her when she disappeared. The real Edgar was no longer the generous child or the clever teenager or the handsome young man she had fallen in love with.

His world had changed – turning around Aria’s one, leaving her devastated.

The worst part of it all was that he didn’t even know he was doing that to her. She had allowed him to step on her heart and hadn’t even complained about it.

Was it her fault? Yes. No.No.

Was it his?

_Yes._

_No._

_Yes._

_No._

She could feel the tears coming on, the knot forming on her throat. She wanted, so desperately, to hate him. Why couldn’t she? Why couldn’t she despise him? Why did his eyes make her so weak? Why did her knees give in every time he smiled at her? Why couldn’t he let go off her heart, already?

Why couldn’t he just free her from this torturous sentiment?

_End my misery. Just end my misery. Leave me at once. Go live your life somewhere I don’t have to ever see you again._

But no. He couldn’t do that. He had to be kind and perfect, and call her his best friend, even though they were no longer children.

_I hate you._

Aria pushed Eddie, then. The pipe dream.

_For doing this to me._

She brought her hands to his chest and forced him back.

_I hate that I let you do this to me._

“Go away,” she muttered. “I don’t want you here.”

_I hate that I can’t even hate you._

Eddie drew back, but then got a hold of her arm. She tried to shove him away, but instead he wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

His voice broke when he said, “I’m sorry, Aria.”

She grabbed his arms, then, but before she could respond, she felt him fade away.

Turning around, “Eddie?”

He wasn’t there.

_No._

_No. What have I done?_

“Come back,” she said, to the darkness. “Come back.”

But she wanted him gone, didn’t she? Wasn’t that what she had asked? For him to go away?

 

Him.

What was his name again?

“Come back,” she said again, but this time she wasn’t sure…

Who was him again?

“Come back, you.”

He was important. She could feel he was important. But no matter how much she kept trying, she couldn’t remember his name or his face anymore.

Wasn’t it crazy? She had seen him just now!

Had it been just now? Or a longer time?

Maybe she had just imagined him.

Him? Was it truly a he, though?

Maybe it had been just a dream.

In the other side of the darkness that surrounded her, a voice said, “You’re always forgetting things, you silly goose.”

 

 

***

_I thought that I would rather lose everything than lose you. I thought it was a fair trade, because I believe maybe you were the love of my life._

_But then, I saw the way you looked at her. I saw the way she always seemed to shine by your side. I saw you two together, and I finally understood what my own mind and body were trying to tell me this whole time._

_You’re not the love of my life – you’re hers. And she’s yours. And your love is pure and magical, and I cried when you kissed at the altar because of how beautiful it was and how lonely I felt._

_How I spent years of my life wishing it was me instead when in reality there’s no other way this story could have gone._

_I cried, and then you smiled at me and said I was such a crybaby. And I chuckled and dried my tears and danced the night away with our friends while trying to keep together the pieces of my broken heart. I was so happy for you. I still am._

_But once the night was over and I found myself climbing the stairs to my empty apartment with my heels on my hand, I thought about me. For the first time in forever, I thought only about me._

_Not us. Not you plus me, as I always had wished for it to be. But just me._

_And I realized that I also want to be happy one day._

_I want to fall in love with someone who will be able to love me back, who will be able to make me shine like the brightest star in the sky._

_I’m writing this to you because I won’t be able to explain it later. Because I want you to know the reasoning behind my decision. Even if it’s painful, I hope you’ll be able to understand me, and eventually also forgive me._

_You are my best friend in the entire world, you’re the first memory I have of friendship, of unconditional love and companionship. The moments we spent together, the good ones and the bad ones, are something I’ll treasure till the day I die, and maybe even beyond that._

_Even though I’ll miss you, and it’s breaking me apart, this is my goodbye._

_I have to find my own way, and to do that, I have to step off yours._

_So forgive me._

_I love you. Forgive me._

_It’s time to wake from this dream._

 

 

_***_

 

Aria opened her eyes to a hospital room, smelling of flowers.

She felt tired, a little bit dizzy. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there, or why she’d needed to be there.

They told her she’d had surgery, and she had been so surprised to find out she was sick. Or well, _had been_ , they’d said.

Breathing problems, a treatment, something of the sorts.

She thought, _Ah, so it was that. What a relief._

 _You’ll feel much better now, you’ll see,_ they told her.

Next to her hospital bed, Aria spotted a vase full of camellias of all sizes and colours. They looked so oddly perfect she wondered if they were real.

The entire room was impregnated with their smell, though. So they had to be.

“What are all these flowers?”

Her sister, who had been chuckling over one of her own silly jokes, suddenly stopped, “Those...you asked to keep them.”

“Did I, now?”

“You did.”

 _How strange,_ she thought. In the language of flowers, camellias meant, _“I’ll love you forever.”_

 _How would it feel,_ wondered Aria, _to be loved?_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
> Find me on twitter and curiouscat as @princesgambit and tumblr as @dearanemone


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